Oil Futures Keep Rising

Oil futures prices rallied Friday for the third consecutive session, propelled by an aggressive demand for heating oil.

The contract for heating oil for delivery in March, on which there is no daily trading limit, advanced by 4.96 cents a gallon on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The other deliveries were up the 2-cent limit.

“There was a real strong cash market before the Merc opened, both in the United States and in Europe,” said John Hill, an analyst in New York with Merrill Lynch Commodities.

“Products are hard to come by,” he said. “We may have seen refinery runs cut back, but we won’t know until Tuesday,” when industry figures are released. “Also, the cold weather in the North and in Europe certainly count.”

Another analyst, Peter Beutel of Rudolf Wolff Energy in New York, said there are a number of other factors.

These, he said, include the efforts of the Venezuelan and Mexican oil ministers traveling around the world urging cooperation by OPEC and non-OPEC nations in trying to stabilize the oil market.

Also, he said, Egypt has cut its oil production and Kuwait’s oil minister is in Russia, presumably talking about the oil crisis.